General Contractor Gone Wild?

In my line of business right now I don’t work for general contractors at all, but in my office, I have a fellow coworker that this is all he does.

I don’t mean to laugh at him but at times I just can’t help it. I mean Rob works his ass off and bids everything that comes his way. Yet, he gets so upset because he does not get most of the bids that he spends hours and hours on. Why?

Well for one, general contractors just use him as a bidding Guinnea pig because they need several bids for their project.

So Rob is always asking me what he is doing wrong? Rob bids about a million a month and gets about 10% of the work he bids. Yes, $100,000 a month is not bad for Rob but he really wants more.

My answer to Rob was to fire a few of his general contractors! Yes, he looked at me like I was nuts but then I sat him down and explained.

Do you remember the 80/20 percent rule post I wrote awhile back? Well, this is where it all comes into play. I had Rob list all his general contractors and next to their names, had him put a check-mark next to the ones he sold something to in the last 6 months.

Remember, when you bid for general contractors it can take up to 3 months for them to get the nod they have the project. This is why I had Rob go back 6 months.

By doing this we dropped 50% off the list. This was the 50% that he received no work at all for 6 months but he spent hours and hours bidding.

Then I went one step further and cut 1 more month off the list. This got the list down to roughly 30%. This 30 percent is truly his very best client base. This is where Rob gets 99% of his income from.

So by doing this small exercise Rob is able to fire 50% of his general contractors and constraint on his 30% core clients but also continue bidding on the other 20% that he does receive a job from now and then.

Plus if he truly wants to get more income then he will find out what he needs to do with the 20% and work hard to get more of their business because he already knows that he has a good lock on the 30 % he already gets most of the work from.

Just think how much more time Rob has now to devote to his core client base. I can tell Rob is much happier now because he does not jump up and down as much. And if he is, he is jumping for joy because he just landed another contract from his general contractor.

Take the time and see who your core client really is. I’ll bet you will be surprised.